Friday, July 13, 2007

[Blogger] A few geeky questions on blogging

I have not dealt with templates, CSS and HTML for close to two years now and I’m just starting to delve into this as I’m giving my bog a major facelift.

Here are some of the obstacles I’m running into. I hope someone could give me a pointer or two.1. How do I eliminate the space/gap between the header and the content body of my blog right now?

2. If I continue using the old template in Blogger, would I still be able to use the new sidebar features such as categorizing my previous posts by tags, inverted archives with the latest dates on top etc. If this is possible, how do I go about doing it? Any existing examples or resources that I can check out?

3. Lastly, should there be any reason I should switch to the new template even though I’m happy with the old one right now?

4 comments:

cybele
said...

My understanding is that you have to convert to the new blogger from classic in order to enjoy the new modules (I really like the add rss feed one and the manager for links ala a blogroll is pretty robust especially for folks who don't like to hand code.)

It's pretty easy to mimic an old template with the easy color changing section. It doesn't look like you've done that much customization from the default, so it might be pretty smooth. (You can create a test blog to fiddle around with it.)

If you're happy with your old template and don't have a pressing need for any of the new features your time might be better spent on content that your readers can enjoy. (When I think about how much time I spent mucking around trying to create a 3 column template recently ... oh, how many posts I could have made.)

Eventually you'll probably want to convert though and sooner may be easier than later because of the tagging the archives issue.

The big question is if you're going to stay with blogger forever. Some folks use blogger as a jumping off point for other platforms.

Just wanted to mention that you can use labels in old Blogger; you just have to add them yourself to your sidebar/template. I still use old Blogger because I have to--you can't use the new version if you host your own blog. I've found that there are work-arounds for most of the NB widgets that I'd like to use (except Recent Comments--haven't found an easy one for that).

I'm not planning to switch to the new customization system, even though I'm hosting on Blogger. I just don't want to risk losing all the customizations I've done, and besides I'm just starting to feel comfortable editing the html myself so why switch to a new system with more to learn? I like the control of being able to edit the template directly which I hear you can't do in the new system (don't really know though.)

Thanks Cybele, Susanv, and Kalyn. As you can see, I managed to fix some of the problems I had. Accept that I still would have to fiddle to see why there's some blank space above my banner. I'm finding tagging possible with the old template. Just have to figure out the archives and all.

I think it is quite tedious to have to try to convert to the new template since all I did with my exisiting template is based on trial and error, like what the headmistress of Food Blog S'cool used to do.

Anyways, big thanks to all for taking time to get back to my questions!

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